September will mark the 100th Test match between the All Blacks and the Springboks, two mighty tribes in the firmament of international rugby.
It will be part of the four-team Rugby Championship and the Freedom Cup, but the trophies will be almost secondary to this time-honoured rivalry, which has spawned two books this year alone.
This clash will also mark just over 100 years since they first locked horns, at the now defunct Carisbrook. For the record, the All Blacks won 13-5.
Last season was the first time since 1993 that the All Blacks and Springboks had not faced each other. Prior to the dismantling of apartheid, of course, there had been sporadic contact. Nothing between 1981- 92, for example.
Some might say that over-familiarity has dulled the edge of All Blacks-Springboks clashes. In recent years, other than the occasional incident such as Bakkies Botha’s headbutting of Jimmy Cowan (2010) and Dean Greyling’s cheap shot on Richie McCaw (2012), these encounters have been characterised by a friendlier atmosphere between the teams.
There is little of the bitterness that shrouded many of the earlier tours, such as 1949, 1956, 1970 and 1976.
But that does not mean the All Blacks will not have much to prove. They did beat the Boks in their opening pool game at Rugby World Cup 2019. The Boks went on to win the whole shebang, since which they went an entire year without Test rugby, due to Covid-19, and then have won their July series against the British and Irish Lions, a series which had its own myriad problems.
The Boks would have been welcomed to New Zealand with open arms, unlike in 1981 when their troubled presence almost sent sleepy ol’ Enzed into civil war. However, the closure of the travel bubble with Australia means the Tests, scheduled for Dunedin and Auckland, will likely (at the time of writing) have to be played across the Ditch.
But do not think that the original schedule randomly spat out Dunedin and Auckland for their two Tests on these shores. The Boks have won just once in Dunedin against the All Blacks, back in 2008 in the last years of Carisbrook when Ricky Januarie scored a brilliant chip and regather solo try to sink an All Blacks team rebuilding after the disaster of 2007.
We know all about the Fortress of Eden Park. The All Blacks have not lost there in the professional era, 1994 being their last reverse and then only thanks to ‘The try from the ends of the Earth from Jean-Luc Sadourny.
You have to go back to 1937, before even the Second World War, for the last time the Boks have lowered the All Blacks at this mystical venue.
The score was 17 – 6 in the third Test. The tourists scored no less than five tries to none, Seldom, if ever, have the All Blacks been so humiliated at their national stadium. This is why the nation was in such a ferment in 1956 when the Boks, who had gone undefeated in Test series anywhere in the world for 60 years, came to town.
All those with a keen sense of rugby history will nod sagely and hope that these two matches, wherever they are played, live up to arguably the greatest rivalry that exists in international rugby.
If nothing else, it might just give the All Blacks forwards a barometer on how far they have come (or not) since they were comprehensively outmuscled by the English in October 2019.
My bet is that it will be all on between two mighty tribes!!